Political Analysis by Mitchell Plitnick

Archive for the ‘Gaza’ Category

It comes as no surprise that Bernie Sanders’ gaffe in his interview with the editorial board of the New York Daily News regarding the 2014 clash between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip has gotten a lot of play. Sanders cited a figure of approximately 10,000 deaths, which was actually the figure for wounded and about five times the number killed.

Sanders immediately accepted the correction, and issued a statement confirming the error. But since then, he has stuck with his basic point: that the Israeli response to Gaza was disproportionate and exceeded any acceptable level of collateral damage to civilians and civilian infrastructure. Read more at Medium.com

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On Monday, most of the presidential candidates addressed the annual conference of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). The speeches hit all the usual marks, with the candidates striving to show that they would promote Israel’s interests better than the others. Palestinians were mentioned almost exclusively in the role of the demonized villain, and the notion of a resolution of the conflict was barely given even the emptiest kind of lip service, if it was mentioned at all.

All of these speakers avoided using one particular word: occupation. None of them offered any hint that they acknowledged that Israel was occupying territory not legally its own, ruling over millions of Palestinians without basic rights. Only Bernie Sanders, delivering a speech from the campaign trail in Utah, mentioned the word.

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The United Nations Human Rights Council’s (UNHRC) report on last summer’s fighting between Israel and Hamas came out on June 15. Before the ink on it was even dry, the Israeli government was condemning it as biased, and accusing the UN of trying to prevent Israel from defending itself.

The allegations, both against Israel and by Israel against the report, are very familiar and very serious. We need to consider soberly the points raised by the UNHRC report as well as the rebuttals Israel has made. Read more at the FMEP blog

Israel and Hamas have agreed to another ceasefire, and there seems to be some sense that this one will last. The terms of the agreement leave many issues up in the air, which tends to work strongly in Israel’s favor. It’s worthwhile to look at who might have won and lost, under the assumption that this ceasefire will actually hold.

The tragic reality after fifty days of bombings, rockets and ground invasions is that neither Israel nor Hamas comes out of this with gains. Israel has gained a ceasefire, but at this point, they have nothing else to show for their efforts. Hamas has gained another episode where they were able to survive Israel’s onslaught, but at the cost of thousands of lives and the destruction of infrastructure that, even for Gaza, is unprecedented. Both sides are looking toward the extended peace talks that are supposed to take place within a month, but counting on such things is often a frivolous effort in the Middle East. Read more at LobeLog.

Like many Jews of my generation and subsequent ones, I read Elie Wiesel’s book “Night” when I was very young. I was moved,

Elie Wiesel doesn’t want to hear about human rights when it comes to Israel

frightened and terribly saddened by the horrors Wiesel and millions of others suffered at the hands of the Nazis.

But Wiesel has failed to learn the lessons of his own experience. Rather than universalizing the call to end the oppression of people regardless of the race, religion or beliefs of either the oppressed or the oppressor, Wiesel has made a special exception for Israel.

For decades, Wiesel was notably silent when it came to Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. But in recent years, he has broken that silence not to defend millions of people suffering under occupation but to be an apologist and even defender of some of Israel’s worst excesses. That state of affairs reached something of a zenith recently when Wiesel, along with the crazed fanatical “rabbi” Smuley Boteach, placed ads defending Israel’s murderous onslaught on Gaza. The terminology they used would have made Goebbels proud.

In short, Elie Wiesel has become a monster, in a very real sense.

I’m gratified to say that not every Holocaust survivor has dealt with their trauma by cowering in tribalism and spewing the kind of venom Wiesel does. Some of them have organized an open letter condemning Wiesel, Israel’s assault on Gaza and the international community for supporting it. (more…)

I explained yesterday how the media was running with a non-story which was being twisted to create the illusion that Israel’s sweep

An IDF photo of the three Israelis murdered in June

through the West Bank in June after the murders of three Israeli youths was justified. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu intentionally seized upon that horrific crime in order to strike a blow at Hamas to some extent but mostly at the new Palestinian unity government. The story was based on the words of Salech al-Aruri, Hamas’ lead representative in Turkey, who had been applauding the despicable act since it occurred.

A few other folks have been trying to correct the false story in the mainstream media, but it’s obviously an uphill battle. Few of Netanyahu’s defenders seem to have noticed that Israeli officials have remained thoroughly silent on this story. You’d think, would you not, that if it were what was being portrayed – that there is now “proof” that Hamas was behind the murders all along – Netanyahu would be crowing in the same hubris-filled manner that he did when one of the ceasefires was broken over a battle in a Gaza tunnel near Rafah. Yet the only sound is that of the proverbial crickets chirping. (more…)

The attempt to resolve the ongoing, albeit highly uneven, exchange of fire between Israel and Gaza has now reached the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). The draft proposal, initially pushed by the United Kingdom, France, and Germany, bears many of the same hallmarks as the most recent Egyptian ceasefire proposal. The United States came late to the game, but at least so far, it appears supportive of the idea. It remains to be seen how this will play out as the proposed resolution nears Security Council consideration.

The goals of the West are clear. One, resolve the current violence. Two, remove the difficult blight of the assault on Gaza, which is a much more powerful motivator for people to join pro-Palestinian protests than the more banal occupation of the West Bank. And three, bring the Gaza Strip back under the control of the Palestinian Authority (PA). Read more at LobeLog.

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